woman is, and will be, womanly wherever placed. No condition can unsex the sexes, The ten commandments will not suffer in her keeping. Her vote will tell for the virtues, against the vices all. Plato said: "Either sex alone is but half itself." Socially, we admit his assertion, and are just beginning to suspect that our republican institutions need to be complemented and rounded with woman's counsels, and administrations also. Good republicans are asking if our legislation is not unsettled, demoralized by the debauchery of hasty politics, by private vices, and the want of manly integrity, woman's honor. Let our courtesy to women be sincere—paid to her modesty as to her person; her intelligence as to her housekeeping; her refining influence in political as in social circles. Where a husband would blush to take his wife and daughters, let him blush to be seen by his sons. "Revere no god," says Euripides, "whom men adore by night." And Sophocles: "Seek not thy fellow-citizens to guide till thou canst order well thine own fireside." Mrs. Alcott and Louisa join in hearty hopes for your success.
Edna D. Cheney wrote:***Howl long for the time when this question being settled, we can all go forward, working together, to discuss and settle the really great questions of political and social economy, of labor, of education, and the full development of human life in State and society.
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:***T hope and trust the electors will be wise and generous enough to decide it in your favor. Were I a citizen of the State I should esteem it alike a duty and a privilege to vote in the affirmative.
Asa Mahan, president of Oberlin College, wrote: The cause which has called you together is a very plain one. It is simply this, whether "taxation without representation" is tyranny to all but one-half of the human race, and the principle that rulers derive their authority to make and administer law from the consent of the governed, holds true of the white man and the black man, of man native or foreign born, and even of the "heathen Chinee," if he belong to the male sex, and is a lie in its application to woman.[1]
Dr. Stone, of Kalamazoo, read an able report of what had-been done, and all it was necessary to do if the friends desired to carry the pending amendment. The following extract will give some idea of the momentous undertaking in canvassing a State:
When the governor decided to call an extra session of the legislature, so as to submit the new constitution to a popular vote next November, the committee had but little time for the circulation of petitions; but enough was done to secure the vote in favor of submission. This was the more easily accomplished because we have in the present legislature so many warm and active friends, who gave that body no rest until their point was carried. And here we find ourselves suddenly brought into a campaign almost as novel as momentous, with scarce a precedent to guide us. We ask the electors of Michigan to share their civil and political power with those who have always been denied all electoral rights—to vest the popular sovereignty not merely in themselves, in a quarter of a million of men, as hitherto, but in half a million of men and women, and so make our State what it is not now, a truly republican commonwealth. We have a great work before us, and no time should be lost in organizing a general canvass of the entire State. Competent lecturers should be employed wherever hearers can be found, and money raised to defray the expenses. Printed documents too, must be circulated; arguments and conclusions framed by those who have thought on these subjects for men, and sometimes for women, who are too indolent to think for themselves. And there are many other things which we must do before the November election; ballots must be furnished for every township and polling place, especially affirmative ballots, and placed in the hands of all the voters. The Executive Committee cannot
- ↑ Among many others were letters from Amos Dresser, Parker Pillsbury, Henry B. Blackwell, Rev. S. Reed, of Ann Arbor, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Dr. Henry B. Baker, Miriam M. Cole, Margaret V. Longley, Abby and Julia Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn., A. C. Voris, from the Ohio constitutional convention, Hon. J. Logan Chipman.
